


The Eobard Chronicles

by eri_quin



Series: Flash Through Like Lightning Sequence [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Rule 63, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4318635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eri_quin/pseuds/eri_quin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side-fic to "Flash Through Like Lightning", where Eobard starts and ends with Barry Allen, and the continuous time travel he goes through for her. His origin all the way to yet another beginning.</p><p>Or in which Barry dies over and over again, and Eobard goes crazy trying to save her and travels back multiple times in time miserably. Time is a harsh mistress and a mean chess player.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eobard Origins I

**Author's Note:**

> I shouldn’t listen to Pruit Igoe & Prophecies from the Watchmen OST on repeat. It’s why this thing gives me a Watchmen vibe XD Hm, this (Origins arc) will probably be in three parts to properly get all the details out and all. Fun, fun.

The year is 2151. He is born Eobard Malachias Thawne, the son of two parents who have created him and chosen the best of genetics from their family line. His hair is as blond as the Greek god Apollo, and his skin is unblemished and soft as newborn skin is supposed to be. He has eyes of the azure skies, which are also intelligent and knowing even just after birth.

He has just been born, and already he is aware and mindful of the world he was thrust into.

The years pass and he is no longer a baby. He is a child, but he does not act like one. He’s smart. He’s intuitive. He’s precocious.

His parents are proud of him and call him a genius, citing they’d chosen well in their gene selection. He is seven years old when they decide to try for another one, to resolve the one flaw about him. His inability to socialize.

Robern Tiberius Thawne is then born. He struggles to take care of his brother, whom his parents leave off to him most of the time. Eobard is a child, but he is smart and despite his frustrations, he learns to be a parent to his younger brother.

Eobard is still incapable of socializing. He does not see the need, especially when the rule of society is to connect but not to keep close.

_“It’s ‘connect but not connect,’” his mother says._

It is a conundrum, a hypocrisy. It makes no sense, but intimacy is frowned upon in his society. Smile and connect…but don’t let anyone come too close. Eobard prefers to daydream, live outside of this society that has rules, too many rules, but not enough sense.

He hears about heroes and daydreams about a world where he is surrounded by heroes and maybe even become one himself…

Eobard is eleven when his class is taken to go to the Museum of Heroes. It is an amazing architectural goliath, celebrating all the heroes that have formed the Age of Heroes of the past. He passes Captain Atom, The Question, even Supergirl. They are all awe-inspiring and Eobard, for once, doesn’t daydream but lives in the moment and in this glorious temple of a golden age.

But then they head to a separate division and he is confronted with not just heroes but gods.

They enter first to visit the section dedicated to Green Lantern –the man that was Hal Jordan. Shades of green encompass the exhibit in emerald wonder, and he is continually in perpetual awe. He barely catches up to his class, caught up in the glamor of heroes passed.

They enter Wonder Woman’s exhibit and it’s blue and red, with gold accents everywhere. The ceiling has stars in its skies, and a gold statue of the Amazonian to match with the emerald crystal likeness of Green Lantern in the other room. He reluctantly pulls himself out of that room, even more than the first time.

But it is the next room that has him enraptured.

The room is swathed in comforting shades of scarlet red and warm gold hues. There is a towering ruby effigy in the middle of the room and he gazes in more than just awe.

He’s worshipful.

Her name is Barry Allen. She is beautiful. The various holograms around the enormous room show that, just as much as the effigy has sculpted her into a goddess. Her eyes are like a kaleidoscope, a hazel that has fragments of blue and green meshed together on a background of brown, and flecks of gold dotted randomly. Her brunette hair is tightly kept to her head in a fishtail updo, but he aches to push back the wayward strands in front of her face.

But it is her lips that he locks onto. Not because they are soft and pouty, but because they quirk up into a smile, an unfamiliar gesture in his society. Her face, her expression…it is so much more different than the world he lives in accepts. Not even the other heroes he’s passed by are the same as the way she looks at him now.

Sweet, kind…gentle… _warm_ and welcoming…

Everything the world now deems unacceptable and useless. His society is cold and rigid.

Barry’s gaze and smile beckons and calls out to him.

This is his first overture. This is when and where he decides his life and his true calling.

Eobard will meet her at any cost.

* * *

 

He is fifteen. It is four years since Barry Allen, even not flesh and blood, had come into his life and turn his head all around. He collects memorabilia of The Flash. He has her biography made by her foster sister Iris. He dreams about her.

When he has his first wet dream, he does not tell his parents so that he can receive his hormone therapy to dull his growing sense of sexuality, as is the norm in society. Instead, he recalls the dream and closes his eyes. He hides in the closet and keeps as quiet as he can. He gags himself with a piece of cloth he finds, and his hand trembles as he reaches into his pants and releases his already stiffening cock. He is a teenager and in the midst of puberty. He is not embarrassed about this because it is normal. Or was normal.

In the society he lives in, he acknowledges that they teach repression in all things and he shouldn’t be indulging himself, especially in the act of masturbation.

But he remembers his dream. He remembers Barry Allen’s smiling face as her lips caress his throat. Her tongue drags down to the hollow under his Adam’s apple and she flicks it. The hold on his cock clenches and his breath hitches.

_“Eobard.”_

He can hear her voice, and he’s had it memorized through years of constantly hearing recreations of it through old videos and holographic projections. Her hands splay across his chest and his hand moves up and down to a rhythm. She unzips the Flash costume off of her tall and slender body, with the zipper stopping just above her navel.

His hand speeds up, and he momentarily chokes on his gag.

She laughs teasingly and shrugs off her suit slowly, and he’s mesmerized by the skin that reveals itself inch by inch. Her full breasts are there for his eyes to feast on, with her dusky nipples hardened into twin peaks. She slides the suit off of her hands, and it hangs precariously around her waist. He can see a hint of curls in the shadow of the suit’s v curve around her lower body.

She tilts her head and a smile curls even wider on those precious lips. His thumb drags across the head of his dick and he whimpers through his gag. He hears her tinkling laugh as she hooks her fingers around her clinging suit and moves it over her arse before letting go and letting it drop to her ankles. She’s now bare and tempting and still all smiles.

_“Eobard, come here.”_

He is a fifteen year old teenager, and his fantasies are plagued by a woman he cannot have but of whom is the only real woman he knows. She welcomes him. She is warm. She is beautiful.

She is not repressed. She is a vibrant being.

His hands are not calloused. They are soft and unworked. They do not know pains of labor and have not known a day of hard work. They feel like silk against his hard shaft and he could almost pretend it was her hand, taking his cock in her firm grip and she’s working it into a frenzy state. Her speeding hand is torturous, going at a painful but pleasurable pace that’s inhuman and makes him burn. She stops and slows. Her soft hand is now gentle around his cock, and the contrast makes him ache.

Barry’s hand begins to vibrate.

Eobard can feel the vibrations around his dick. They are slow, and an almost lazy hum that massages his penis into a satisfied but needful state. Through her vibrating hand, he can feel the power thrumming through her veins, through her powerful body. Her fingers flex. She palms the underside of his cock.

The vibrations speed up and he yelps around his gag, because his cock is weeping joyously as the vibrations act like an earthquake that tears into him. She takes her hand and creates a fist around his dick, unforgivingly holding it there as she ups the vibrations faster and faster. She stops. He cries pathetically. He hears her lyrical laughter again.

Barry steps out of her suit, letting the uniform slip off her ankles and leaves it behind her as she comes to him. Her body is slightly vibrating in a show of power, and she leans over him as she retrieves his still hardened dick and positions herself over it. Up close, Eobard can see the lightning lightly crackling over her glistening body, creating a golden sheen over her skin and making his vision of her as a goddess even more a reality.

Slowly, she slips his shaft into her tight heat and she’s so tight. The vibrations he noted before isn’t just restricted to around her body, but her core is like a pulsing cavern that welcomes his cock into it like he is coming home. She shifts and then she starts to move.

She’s bouncing on his lap with no hurry, because she’s always been about speed and she’s always been in control of that. How fast (or how slow) they go depends on her. She is Speed. He is her maintainer and just along for the ride.

His cock doesn’t disagree with that notion.

He holds her steady, his hands placed on her waist. He rolls his hips with her, his breath catching and losing it as she clenches her cunt around him sporadically, naturally and because of the vibrations. He is young. He is insatiable. So Eobard dives his face into her chest and latches onto one of her breasts, teeth catching around one of her nipples. He tugs at it, lets his tongue slither out of his mouth and roll around the nub, and then sucks on it with his lips.

Eobard is rewarded as she moans and throws her head back, baring her neck for him to gaze at and move his mouth from her breast to the long pale column divulge before him. She gyrates her hips slowly, slowing down their pace even more, and she combines the durations with her core purposely vibrating into more pulsating-like rhythms. He desperately pumps in and out of her cunt, until she’s done torturing him. She lifts herself up back one more time slowly, and then slams onto him in one thrust, engulfing his shaft into her heavenly heat. She increases her speed until she’s blurring, and his eyes roll in the back of his head.

Eobard cums and he is in an empty closet with a dirty hand, and he hangs his head.

* * *

 

He has researched everything he can. Every source, every book, every piece of the puzzle he can to put it all together. He has spent the last five years (and more, if he counted all the years beforehand, when he was younger and to the time when he just found her in that museum) attempting to find out everything he can about the experiment that gave Barry Allen her powers.

He is twenty years old when he has meticulously collected every chemical that was known to be in Barry’s presence the night of the accident. He has calculated the best time to perform this recreation, and he monitors the weather closely, until he notes the perfect time when the chance of a storm comes and he makes sure to collect as much metal around his vicinity as possible. He knows the risks. He is prepared for them.

As on schedule, the storm rolls in. The rain is leaking through the rough ceiling of the abandon warehouse he’d chosen. Lightning flashes and he feels anxious. And then lightning strikes, and it aims true. He can feel it hit him and course through his body like an electrical current, burning like fire in his insides.

He’s surprised to still be alive, but more so that he was awake. Barry had gone into a coma after, so he worries that it didn’t work for him. But he takes a look at his hands and they crackle with lightning the color of red, as they vibrate and then begin to blur.

He is joyous. He has succeeded.

It will not be long soon until he meets Barry Allen.

* * *

 

He practices. It is hard because it is more than speeding around. To be able to travel back in time, he will need to be _fast_. He needed to be fast enough to rupture a barrier and create a time warp, and then he would need to find his way to the one woman in his life that is more alive than the women in his time that act more like drones. It takes him a whole five years to accomplish this.

He is now twenty five, and growing impatient.

But now that he finds he is capable of going back even just one day, he finds himself ready. He looks around himself. There is nothing to miss about this world. It is cold and gray, lifeless and meaningless to him. His parents are just biological donors that has created him into being, and his brother…Eobard is the one who has raised him from the time was born and he has become as in tune to this society and accepted his empty place. His brother has become as pointless as the rest, dutifully following the world’s ways.

Eobard has nothing there. There is nothing for him to care about, and so he will leave with no regrets.

He takes nothing with him because he has no need of any of it. He is not attached to anything or anyone. Some of The Flash collection he has becomes pointless, because soon he will have the real thing in front of him. Even the biography he prized means nothing, when he will be living Barry’s life with her.

In a blink of an eye, he has entered a multi-colored stream of otherworldness. He runs and keeps running. He thinks of Barry and focuses on her. His feet pound against nothing, but he keeps moving as if he has gravel or concrete to run on.

He opens his eyes, having not realized he’s closed them, and finds a bright white light. He burst through and suddenly he is in an area where life is bursting around him. Everything is colorful. He is not surrounded by white and gray. Everything is loud, not muted.

Eobard is in the 21st century, and it is the year 2018.

This is home. This is where he will meet Barry Allen.

He laughs loudly and feels as if he has been reborn.

* * *

 

Eobard has been there a total of three days. He is growing terrified. He has nowhere to go, or any clue as to what to do next. He has not thought beyond getting to this time, aside from meeting Barry.

He is lost.

The park he landed in is his new home while he acclimates to his situation. He takes to sleeping on a park bench at night and when he feels tired. In the day time, he wanders around, trying to find his bearings.

By the fifth day, he has been arrested by cops who tell him it is illegal to loiter and that he can’t sleep and stay indefinitely in the park. He wants to tell them he is not a homeless person, but the words are stuck in his throat and he has no idea what else to tell them to explain his situation.

He cannot tell them he is a time traveler. It is absurd.

Eobard is dragged to the police precinct, where he is questioned and written up. He tells them he doesn’t know where he is or that he hasn't anyone or anywhere to go to. It is better that way, vague, and if it implies amnesia –all the better. He _is_ telling the truth. He has nowhere and no one. He _doesn’t_  know exactly where he has landed.

Eobard doesn’t realized he’s been overheard.

“I’ll take him in,” he hears a sweet voice, and he turns to refute the kind offer (no one in his society would have ever done so) because he has only one goal and it is Barry –

His breath catches and his eyes widened.

Right there in front of him, flesh and blood, with the warm and inviting look he has come to associate with her…

It _is_ Barry Allen. And she is offering to take him. To come _home_ with her. He has found home now.

Barry smiles and holds out her hand to him. She introduces herself to him, even though he wants to say he already knows who she is.

She is beautiful.      

Started 7/10/15 – Completed 7/11/15


	2. Eobard Origins II

Her hands are gentle on him. She leads him to his new home, and it's small and cramped –but it's as alive as she is next to him. There are little things that show proof of living, little things that show Barry's personality, little things that make the place reflect Barry and show how homely the place is.

His own home had been closer to a mausoleum than a home, or even a sanitized building that the dead lived in.

But this place was now his home too. The future is now his past. This is his future.  _Barry_  is his future.

"I know it's kind of small and messy," she says in embarrassment, "but it's home. And hopefully that means you too?"

He smiles brightly, because she is such a kind, loving person. He is a stranger. She has just met him. And yet she is so willing to open up her home to him, that he feels so much right then.

But he also dislikes the notion that if he wasn't who he was and she had shown such kindness to someone who wouldn't appreciate it like him, she could have been easily been taken advantage of. It makes his blood boil and he swears that he will never let anyone do so, and he will make any who try pay painfully.

Barry is his to protect, and all those who would dare hurt her will regret it.

She laughs suddenly, and her twinkling eyes smile at him just as her lips does.

"I never asked…but do you remember your name?"

He smiles back. "Eobard. I remember it's Eobard."

And when he needs a surname to allow him to stay there, to get work, to live in that era and with her…she gives him her name. His new identity is Eobard Allen, and it causes strange, staggering thumps within his chest to emerge.

He is Eobard Allen. She is Barry Allen. So quickly, so immediately has he come close to his idol that it feels surreal and too much like a dream. He is terrified of waking up and finding out it is.

Their lives together has just begun.

* * *

Neither of them know how to cook. It is an adventure in the kitchen, and he has fun trying with her. She makes chicken soup from scratch that is too sour. He tries for pancakes, but he makes the batter too thin. They try to make brownies together and they finally make a success. They're good at baking.

She confesses she has always had a sweet tooth, particularly for chocolate. He has never had the opportunity to have one, but now decides that he too has a sweet tooth as well.

They bask in their success that night, watching Bond films and devouring the brownies they made.

It isn't long after that, that he finds employment within a little coffeehouse called Jitters. They are hiring, and Barry encourages him to try for a job. He wants to impress her, so he does and he's surprised when he gets hired. The job is tedious, but there are many interesting people coming in and out of the place. It is so much more different than the time he left behind, where people are monotonous and uncaring. He enjoys this time. It is more lively and freeing, and Barry Allen is alive and is his friend.

He feels greedy when he wants more.

Especially when she takes to checking up on him, always visiting him at his job. With her speed, it is no wonder she can just take off and be where she wants, even when she's supposed to be at work. And that she uses her powers to check in on him, he feels special even when he's sure that she probably does so for her other family and friends. But now he's  _included_ in that close circle, so it's just as well.

"You seem to be fitting in well and enjoying your job as well," Barry says to him one night.

He smiles faintly at her. "I feel…comfortable. At home for once."

"You must not have had a nice life before," she muses gently, and carefully places her hand over his in comfort.

His heart thumps loudly.

"No, I don't believe it was," he murmurs. "So thank you for letting me into your life."

Her bright smile makes him crave her all the more, and he hesitantly leans over and embraces her. She doesn't stiffen up, but allows him and even moves to embrace him back. Her arms are tender and caring as they encircle him, and he knows that everything up until then has been worth it just for this.

And then she leans back, still smiling, and says, "Life is important, Eobard. You cherish it and don't give up on it and the things you want to do in life and the things you want, no matter what obstacles you may face. In the end, it could be too late. You never know what tomorrow brings."

It is so opposite of what his society believed in. They preached to only work on one's abilities and capabilities, to not try something new, to give up when it is too hard and move on to something easier and a better use of time. It has always been about a streamlined life, a streamlined society.

He looks at her in awe and knows that he is irrevocably changed by this woman, and that he is completely and utterly in love with her.

Not even waking up in the morning, finding her walking around sleepily in her underwear, can remove him from his airy and content disposition. Though, his red face and slacked jaw did wonders to embarrass him, more so the erection he'd gained as he stared at her.

He's mortified, but in the back of his mind he understands himself. Apart from Barry's beauty and wonderful figure, he comes from an era where modesty is encouraged and no one walks around like that, even inside their own homes. Even as an embarrassing mistake from Barry herself, an anomaly consequence to her sleeping conditions, his society does not allow for lust, sexuality, or love even…His instant reaction is an unfortunate cause of being part of a society that has denied him all of that, and his sensitivity is higher than the people around him now.

He is also confronted by a woman who he has idol worshipped, loved, and grown close to. It makes sense that he's unable to hide himself from her, and react so quickly to this fantastical woman he never thought he'd ever meet.

She laughs in embarrassment, he laughs with her and gives a half-grin, and the moment is awkward but still perfect and natural.

Eobard is full of lust and love, his body heated, and fully embarrassed –but he embraces all those emotions. Because he is living in the moment, instead of withering away in the past –his past.

* * *

He is starting to fit in and have a life. Everything is going the way he'd dreamed it would, and he is happy.

He gets a shock in the form of his ancestor.

Eddie Thawne is no one special. Even before, when he was required to know his family line, he recalls his name vaguely. Eddie had been one of the Thawnes in history who had done nothing special, nothing to stick to his name. He had been born, lived, became a cop, passed on the line, and then had died.

Eobard hadn't known Eddie had worked so closely with Barry though.

It is slightly unnerving, but nothing to him. His ancestor married some nameless woman, and had a child. The child carried on the line.

He is not worried about Eddie and whatever connection he has with Barry. His history, as he recalls it, showed that Barry had never been with anyone. There have been numerous rumors and whispers about her connections to Hal Jordan, Bruce Wayne, and even Leonard Snart –Captain Cold himself. There have been rumors of others. But never has she ever been completely romantically linked with anyone, and he is sure of that. Eddie Thawne had never been a thought, and no one in history really recalled him, much less gossiped about him and Barry together.

But he dislikes and keeps an eye on the long gazes his ancestor sends Barry in the café, the lingering touches the blond man carefully places upon the cheerful superhero, and the grins that Eddie offers readily to her.

It makes him inwardly cringe and bristle at the same time. None of them deserve Barry. That was his thought then, when he was learning about her life and all the men connected to her, and that is his thought now.

Eobard can't stand the thought of her with anyone. Anyone that isn't him at least.

However, it turns out it isn't his ancestor he has to really worry about after all. A robbery occurs and Captain Cold is behind it. Eobard is curious, so he races over to see Barry in action. She's quick and efficient with the others, neatly knocking them out…but she takes her time with Cold, who simply grins widely and aims his gun. He shoots lazily at her, and Barry dodges. It's like Snart isn't even trying. And Barry…and Barry is laughing delightedly.

The two of them trade barbs, and she's almost playful as she taunts him. Cold is snickering and-and  _looking_ –he's gazing unashamedly at Barry, not even bothering to hide his wanton gaze or his lust. And Eobard can see through it all, and realizes that they're practically  _flirting_.

It makes his blood boil, and he desperately wants to speed out there and beat Cold to the ground and then grab onto Barry possessively. He gets a hold of himself, and breathes in and out. In. Out.

He goes back to his job and finishes out the day with a morose air surrounding him. By the time he's home, he's huddled in his bed and burying his face into his pillow. He falls asleep quickly and he dreams of the time he visited the museum for heroes, and remembers The Flash's area –he remembers greedily looking at all the information, trying to soak it all in, and stumbles across a section for her enemies.

_The Reverse Flash is the complete opposite of Barry Allen. A man in her colors in reverse form, with powers likened to hers._

_He is The Flash's greatest enemy. He'd come from nowhere, challenging her and sometimes equally fighting her to a draw. His name and face were never revealed, but his eyes were the shade of what looked like blue jewels._

_His origin may have been unknown, but his presence had become infamous and familiar quickly._

And Eobard wakes up miserably, trudging into the bathroom with thoughts about villains and jealousy, and stares at himself in the mirror. Those eyes…

His eyes are the exact replica of the man in his dreams.

Eobard doesn't realize the hysteria that overcomes him, not until he finds himself in a panicked embrace and that Barry is clutching onto him tightly. He wants to scream at her to not hold him, for he is her monster. That he is going to be the monster that tears her down, the villain to her hero. The darkness to her light.

They were to be opposing forces, and Eobard wishes he could wipe his mind clean of this information.

But instead she holds onto him and he clutches onto her.

His life had been perfect. Why has it come to this?

" _It is an equivalent exchange. To want for something, you must give up something. You cannot live as if you are entitled to it all."_

It is one of the few things his father had imparted on him, to explain the workings of their society. That their society didn't truly 'want,' because to want, something must be given to 'have.' That even in their society, in the shallow wants that did occur, equivalent exchange was the law of the world.

To ensure everything was fair and balanced.

To know that now, his father's words would be so true and rule the situation he was stuck in…Eobard did have everything. In fact, he'd wanted Barry Allen so much, to just be in his life and for him to be in hers, and was blissful when that came true.

But now that Eobard finally had her, he had to give something up. He is selfish and he doesn't want to. He would fight even the gods if he had to.

By then, Eobard knows that he would die for Barry Allen.

* * *

He goes into denial, and refuses to think more on the subject. Whether or not the Reverse Flash existed does not matter, because he will not exist now. He continues on with his life, and Barry –worried still –is always there for him. He tries to do the same, for he cannot and will not lose her.

He is surprised by how hard it is actually.

He thought the temptation to become the Reverse Flash would be nonexistent, because he never wanted to be Barry's enemy. But then Barry becomes more and more involved with villains that don't care or like her in the same way her Rogues does. The villains in Central City are anomalies and care too much about the hero they are supposed to oppose.

Barry, as powerful as she is, lacks a true opponent –a rival that would help her continue to match and surpass her height of power. In fact, the lack of challenge has caused her to become lax at times.

It frightens him. More so, as he remembers what his past –the future –had taught him. The enemies she would face, especially the ones with otherworldly powers. Those that come from other dimensions. From other planets. Other timelines, he thinks ironically.

Barry is not yet ready for those trials.

Still, he is reluctant. He does not want to give her up, to be her villain. He is happy where he is, and maybe at least he can stay by her side. There is no worry in revealing himself to her, if only he can mask who he is as the villain she needs. He can have his life with her, and be the one who pushes her limits at the same time.

Eobard gives in and creates and dons the costume that he knows belongs to The Flash's lifelong arch nemesis, and prepares himself to play this role for her own good.

The next time she faces off against Captain Cold, Eobard is there and ready to make his debut into her life as her reverse. He admits he feels a bit of vindictive glee as he interrupts their battle, throwing all good humored banter off as he comes in between them. He is even more satisfied after he easily takes Cold out, throwing him away and knocking him unconscious.

He wears his signature suit, the matching colors in reverse to Barry's outfit, and faces her from his profile. He stares back at her, watching her surprise turn into wariness. He knows his eyes are a glowing red, a trick he'd learned and practiced back when he was in his own time, and is thankful for it as it helps to disguise himself and keep her from knowing the truth. He recognized his own eyes; he doubts that Barry wouldn't be able to either.

He takes a deep breath. And then he races forward in a crackle of red lightning that matches her golden aura. He crashes into her and then they smash through the wall in a thunderous explosion of marble and concrete and glass. They land on the sidewalk, but with both of their speeds, they were up and then running. Literally.

They race through the city and he's practically breathless. Not just because of the race he's participating in, but because he's  _finally_ seeing Barry Allen at her best. He'd always imagined, ever since he was a little boy, how she would speed around, fight her enemies, the voracity of her movements and the power of what she called the Speed Force surrounding her.

This was amazing. This was breathtaking.

Eobard has to refrain from breaking out into excited whoops at the exhilaration he is experiencing. It wouldn't be very frightening and intimidating of him, if he were to do so. The whole point of this was to give Barry a real villain, someone to challenge and push her to her limits and beyond.

It goes without saying that Barry is still more experienced, faster, and powerful than him at this point. They wreck upon the old Ferris Air Testing Facility, where Barry is faster to recover and lashes out with her foot, catching him in the gut with a back kick as she plants her hands on the ground. She flips backwards and lands on her feet, touching ground for only a second before she's off and catches him in the jaw with a hook punch.

Eobard's able to speed away and gather his wits, and this time he manages a haymaker that catches her across the face as it smacks right into her cheek. He doesn't allow himself to feel regret, making himself push his inexperienced body into fighting a fight with a more experienced fighter. He  _needs_ to prove he is a challenge and to challenge her as at least an almost equal. With time, he knows he can become better. But now, he needs to at least prove a point.

An uppercut punch makes him stumble back, but he shakes it off and kicks out, aiming for her side. It's blocked, but she grabs onto his leg and yanks him forward. She's able to grab him by the throat and pick him up, tossing him into the ground. She straddles him and grips his wrists, but before he can attempt to toss her off, she glares into his eyes.

"What the hell, Eobard?"

He freezes from underneath her and looks up into her angry hazel eyes, even as he's pleased that he's got her as breathless as himself, and seemingly had given her a challenge as he'd meant to.

"I'm not stupid," she almost snarls at him. "I know you well enough to know the way you move, the way you adjust your body."

Eobard shouldn't be so damn happy about that, but he is. He so is.

"Why?"

What he can't stand and is unhappy to see, is the heartbreak in her voice and the tears lining her eyes.

He catches his breath as she leans away from him and takes her hands away from his wrists. In return, he reaches up and grasps her face in his hands.

"My name is Eobard Thawne. I was born in the year 2151…"

Started 7/15/15 – Completed 8/1/15


End file.
